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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29004108">landscape with the fall of icarus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanish_sahara/pseuds/spanish_sahara'>spanish_sahara</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Time Skip, past: hinata/others, trying to not lose your shit: a memoir by miya atsumu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:41:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,502</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29004108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanish_sahara/pseuds/spanish_sahara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Shouyou and Atsumu, featuring: a very adult conversation about exes, the plausibility of fucking the sun, and Naruto.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>360</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>landscape with the fall of icarus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>(title from the poem "landscape with the fall of icarus" by william carlos williams)</p><p>as a tribute to me finishing haikyuu in two weeks and sobbing through the final arc and subsequently becoming an empty husk of myself, i wrote this. isn’t that neat</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The day that Atsumu finds out that Shouyou used to date an internationally famous Youtuber, he chooses Option C out of “Miya-Certified Ways to Contain Imminent, Apocalyptic Disasters”—right before Option A: Sulk in the locker room, and Option B: Stress-eat a whole box of brown sugar boba ice cream bars—and dutifully consults his emotional support system.</p><p>Bokuto says, “LOVE IS A WONDERFUL THING, TSUM-TSUM.”</p><p>Sakusa says, “Who gives a fuck?”</p><p>Osamu says, “Makes you wonder why Shouyou-kun’s datin’ your sorry ass then,” and then Atsumu’s shitty reception in the gym bathroom disconnects the FaceTime call before Atsumu can scream his voice hoarse at Osamu’s blurry, evil face.</p><p>“You do realize,” Sakusa says when Atsumu brings it up to him again in a last-ditch attempt to not lose his shit after practice, “that you are also a internationally famous volleyball player?”</p><p>Well, <em>duh</em>, Atsumu wants to say, but it’s not the same. Saying this would also mean admitting that Atsumu thinks that being an internationally famous volleyball player may not be as cool as being an internationally famous YouTuber, gamer, internet personality extraordinaire, etcetera etcetera—which <em>it’s not</em>. Obviously. It’s just categorically on a different level of coolness than what Atsumu’s doing. Obviously.</p><p>“Isn’t he also a billionaire CEO or something?” Inunaki chimes in. Atsumu still hasn’t gotten a good read on whether or not Inunaki actually likes him. He’s 80% sure he does, but then Inunaki will go ahead and say stuff like this with a benign smile on his face like he isn’t doing the verbal equivalent of tee-bagging over Atsumu’s defiled corpse.</p><p>Shouyou chooses this opportune moment to float boisterously and gracefully—how he manages to accomplish both, Atsumu has yet to find out—down next to Atsumu on the gym floor. He sends Atsumu a bright smile as he bumps shoulders with him, sweat still beading down his neck from the last few practice drills. Atsumu wants to lick it. Atsumu wants to lick him. Atsumu wants to take Shouyou into his arms, in all his warmth and sweat and blistering kindnesses, and remind himself that Shouyou <em>chose </em>him, is choosing him, and that Atsumu is choosing him right back, just as one chooses every day to wake up and rise with the sun and the sun generously decides to grace you with its presence once more. Is it possible to fuck the sun? He had a conversation with Osamu once about the fuckability of craters on the moon, but the question of 5,505 degrees of Celsius on your dick was an entirely different—</p><p>Jesus. Atsumu needs a new emotional support system. He needs to come up with an Option D and E and F, <em>stat</em>.</p><p>“Who are you guys talking about?” Shouyou asks. </p><p>Before Atsumu can say anything, Bokuto says, “KENMA.” He pauses, and adds, in an attempt at a quieter volume, “Your ex-boyfriend, right?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Shouyou says. “What about him?”</p><p>Inunaki blinks. “You dated <em>Kodzuken</em>?” </p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Shouyou says. “What about it?”</p><p>“Was it—” Atsumu’s voice is cracking. Shit. “Was it, like, an, er, serious thing, Shouyou-kun?”</p><p>Sakusa is definitely looking at Atsumu like he does when he can’t believe Atsumu is capable of stringing together actual human words. Atsumu ignores him. </p><p>“Mm, Kenma and I were each other’s first—” Emotional support <em>ecosystems</em>, Atsumu thinks despairingly “—boyfriends, but we only dated for a few months until we realized it wasn’t really working. We’ve stayed good friends ever since!” </p><p>“YOUR EMOTIONAL FORTITUDE IS ASTOUNDING, HINATA-KUN,” Bokuto says. Bokuto has dated the same person since high school. Bokuto has frequently used Atsumu as an emotional support system for when Akaashi Keiji—who, from what Atsumu has gathered, is a glasses-wearing incubus located deep within the confines of a Tokyo publishing company—fails to return his FaceTime calls within two hours.</p><p>Shouyou laughs. Atsumu feels the sound vibrate through his whole body. “Thanks, Bokuto-san! I guess I’ve never really had a problem being friends with my exes though. It’s always nice to keep people like that in your life.”</p><p>Shouyou-kun is too nice, Atsumu thinks, fondly, wondrously, because there has never been a moment in his life when he hasn’t been in terrible, knee-dropping awe of Hinata Shouyou being, well—Shouyou.</p><p>And then he thinks:</p><p><em>Exes</em>. </p><p><em>Like, plural?</em>  </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Atsumu is the one to ask Shouyou out first. </p><p>It happens one month into Shouyou’s return to the Japanese volleyball scene, one month into Atsumu’s fulfillment of a six-year-old promise that he only remembered making when he set that first ball to Shouyou in the air and tucked his tongue between his teeth and thought, blissfully, <em>Apocalyptic disaster, incoming</em>.</p><p>Bokuto congratulates him with a solid, shiny-eyed fist bump. Both Sakusa and Osamu tell him separately to not fuck it up in the same dead tone, and Atsumu prays to the gods and goddesses and Shinsuke Kita to never let them be in the same room together ever again. (Inunaki just smiles when he tells him. Atsumu doesn’t even know what to do with that.)</p><p>Shouyou says, “Of course, Atsumu-san,” with a wide, toothy smile, and then he loops his arms around Atsumu’s waist to hug him tight. Shouyou’s hair ends up partially stuffed up his nose, but whatever. Atsumu is too happy to care.</p><p>He doesn’t tell Shouyou that he’s Atsumu’s first—<em>everything</em>, emotionally speaking, at least—but Shouyou somehow adjusts to all of Atsumu’s edges and insecurities without ever needing to be told. Atsumu’s whole world has always been volleyball (and sometimes Osamu, but then Osamu left, too). Shouyou came into it a little later than him, but for the past six or seven years, he has lived and breathed in the same spaces, has dug his feet into its unforgiving sands without ever looking back. Shouyou carries the same calluses on his arms and knees and fingertips as Atsumu, and that means something, because when Shouyou drags his palms over Atsumu’s face and brings him in for a kiss, it means that Atsumu presses back, just as roughly, just as tenderly, scars and skin and all.</p><p>Is it possible to fuck the sun? Probably not, but Atsumu didn’t get to where he is on the chance of <em>Probably</em>. He’ll keep going and going until he’s a stinking hot pile of goo and guts, and even then, Atsumu thinks it’ll still be nice—there’s only so many lifetimes where you get to feel like you’ve been kissed by fire.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Practice is over, so Atsumu heads over to Shouyou’s place for the night. He’s been quiet the whole walk there, and he’s pretty sure Shouyou’s noticed at this point, but he takes it in stride and still keeps up a steady stream of conversation because it’s a universally known fact that Miya Atsumu can be a moody bitch. When they get back to Shouyou’s apartment, Atsumu showers—while valiantly trying to not sulk underneath the hot spray of the water for no longer than five minutes—and Shouyou starts up dinner in the kitchen.</p><p>When Atsumu comes back out, he towels off his hair and watches Shouyou cut up vegetables. Shouyou’s humming the tune to some song that Atsumu showed him. He’s off-key, like he usually is, but it’s nice. Shouyou is always so goddamn nice. </p><p>“So, Atsumu-san—” </p><p>“You didn’t tell me about Kodzuken,” Atsumu blurts out. </p><p>Shouyou stops chopping and looks up at him. Atsumu studiously eyes a smudged spot on the refrigerator. You are an internationally famous volleyball player, he thinks. You have cool hair. That counts for something. </p><p>“Ah, you mean Kenma?” Shouyou says, unfazed. “Sorry about that! It was so long ago that I didn’t know how to bring it up.”</p><p>“Makes sense,” Atsumu says. And then: “How long ago are we talkin’?”</p><p>“I think it was back in my second year, Kenma’s third year?”</p><p>Atsumu blanches. “You dated an older guy?”</p><p>“Atsumu-san,” says Shouyou kindly, “we have the same age difference.”</p><p>“I mean—it’s not like I’m your <em>senpai </em>or anything,” he says, fiddling with a wet strand of hair. He needs to blow-dry it before it does that thing he hates. “Like. We’re equals, yeah? Partners. But datin’ someone older in high school is like—it’s like if I dated Kita-san, or something, back in the day.”</p><p>Shouyou squints, which is a sight unfair and cute enough to momentarily distract Atsumu from Imminent, Apocalyptic Disaster. “I thought you had a crush on Kita-san when you were in high school, too. Osamu-san told me.”</p><p>Blood of my blood, Atsumu thinks. Bone of my bone. Osamu can go eat shit. </p><p>“An <em>admiration</em>,” Atsumu stresses. “Anyways, it’s not like I actually dated Kita-san.”</p><p>Shouyou still has his squint face on. “Are you mad I dated Kenma? Because it really wasn’t that serious.” </p><p>Abort mission. “No, no,” Atsumu says. “I’m not sayin’—it’s ok if you, uh—I mean, I get I’m not <em>your first</em>, that’s all. That’s fine.”</p><p><em>You are a functioning human being capable of emitting sound</em>, his inner Sakusa says to him. Atsumu’s going to have night terrors. <em>Act like it, you dipshit</em>.</p><p>He hears the clink of a knife being gently set down, and then Shouyou is next to him, tentatively brushing the ends of Atsumu’s wet hair. Atsumu feels the beginnings of a blush creeping from his neck to face.</p><p>“I’m yours now,” Shouyou says, soft, which—cool, the sweetest dagger to the chest <em>ever</em>, Atsumu can deal with it, is going to remember those words and this feeling forever until it’s nothing but the ghost of metal and gooey residue in his body. Hah. Who needs the memories when he has the stitched-up, cauterized wound in his heart to show it?</p><p>“Still,” Shouyou continues, fearless as ever, “if you really want to, we can sit down and talk about it, Atsumu-san. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”</p><p>Atsumu means to say <em>No, it’s fine, I’m completely secure in every aspect of our relationship, Shouyou-kun,</em> but then Shouyou takes one look at his face, and then tells him that they’ll order takeout tonight instead.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They sit down and talk about it. Atsumu makes tea first, because Shouyou likes tea, and Atsumu likes Shouyou.</p><p>Shouyou is patient and sips his tea and waits for Atsumu to speak first, as he usually does when Atsumu gets in one of his moods. And it’s not like they haven’t had these kinds of conversations before—would this be considered a fight? Are they fighting?—but this instance feels different, somehow. Atsumu isn’t in one of those moods where the store ran out of boba milk bars or he found a pimple on the bridge of his nose or even where he had a lousy day at practice. He’s in a mood where he’s finding it really fucking difficult to put a name to the ugliness clogging beneath his skin, to the way that Shouyou is staring at him, patient, steady, all the things that everyone thought he couldn’t be, and all Atsumu can bring himself to think is: <em>I want to be enough for all of this. Am I enough? Should I go out and become a famous YouTuber, too?</em></p><p>“Sorry,” Atsumu mumbles, and then he winces. <em>Are you apologizing to just give yourself a little relief? </em>“I know I’m not makin’ much sense right now.”</p><p>“Atsumu-san,” Shouyou chides. “You’ll only make sense if you talk through it.”</p><p>Atsumu wants to groan at the cliche of it all, but he’d probably get bopped in the head by Shouyou if he did that, so. “I’m not mad that you dated Kodz—Kenma-kun,” he amends. “Not mad about any of that. It’s just. Well.”</p><p>“Well,” Hinata echoes, not unkindly. </p><p>“Is it weird that I feel weird about you datin’ people before me, when I haven’t really done the same?”</p><p>“I don’t think it’s weird,” Shouyou says immediately, and then pauses. He scrunches his face in the way Shouyou does when he’s Thinking. “With Kenma, I was the first person he dated, too, so I guess that’s different. And then, with the others.”</p><p>Atsumu can sense the hesitation in his voice. He draws his nails, short and manicured, against the meat of his thigh. You are a functional human being capable of emitting sound. Now speak. Now go. </p><p>“The others,” Atsumu echoes, not unkindly. </p><p>“I dated Yudai-san in my third year of high school,” Shouyou says, and brushes his knuckles against Atsumu’s legs. Atsumu doesn’t know if it’s on purpose or not. “That didn’t last too long either. Yudai-kun is really shy, in a different way than Kenma ... I think I was his first boyfriend, too.”</p><p>Atsumu frowns. Hyakuzawa Yudai was a middle blocker for the Railway Warriors. Hyakuzawa Yudai was 202 centimeters. Atsumu was 183. 184, if you rounded up. </p><p>“But that’s pretty much it, honestly. I didn’t really have much time to date seriously when I got to Brazil.” </p><p>Brazil, Atsumu remembers suddenly, like a face-full of sand to the face.</p><p>“Brazil,” Atsumu says. “Right. Seriously? You didn’t get with anyone there?”</p><p>Shouyou shrugs. “It wasn’t the most important thing to me at the time.”</p><p>“Not even—” and here, Atsumu says fuck it to some of the last threads of rationality tethering him to the cruel, unmoving earth “—Oikawa Tooru?” </p><p>Shouyou blinks, a single, slow movement—slow for Shouyou, at least—before he bursts out laughing. “<em>Oikawa-san? </em>No way. What would make you think that?”</p><p>Atsumu does not say, <em>I stalked your Instagram when I found out you were coming back to Japan and found an incriminating selfie of you and Argentinian setter Oikawa Tooru, and also a few sweaty, shirtless pictures of you because it must’ve been really hot in Brazil, huh, Shouyou-kun</em>—</p><p>Atsumu says, “I might’ve misheard something.”</p><p>Shouyou is still laughing, like it’s funny that Atsumu used to ruminate on whether or not Shouyou entangled himself in torrid one night stands with Argentinian setter Oikawa Tooru. Shouyou is a bit of an asshole, too. Maybe that’s why Atsumu is fucking crazy for him.</p><p>“Oikawa-san has been in love with the same guy since high school,” Shouyou says, grinning. “I only know this ‘cause he told me every single time we went out drinking together.” </p><p>Atsumu allows a smidge of empathy to swell into his blackened heart. “Seriously?”</p><p>“Yep! It’s pretty sappy.” Shouyou’s voice drops into a whisper. “Sappier than even Bokuto-san and Akaashi-san, probably.” </p><p>“Wow,” Atsumu says, moved. “That feels literally impossible, but alright.”</p><p>They both go a little quiet after that. Atsumu contemplates the collective, love-struck insanity of the professional men’s volleyball league. Shouyou starts humming again and keeps his hands loose and curling near Atsumu’s thighs.</p><p>And really, all Atsumu wants to do is to stop dicking around and reach across those few centimeters and thread his fingers through Shouyou’s, pinkie, ring, index. It would be easy. He knew how to do it right, because he’d done it a thousand times over, because his fingertips were specially trained for that kind of sensation and muscle memory really was a wonderful thing. Atsumu doesn’t do it though because there’s still that annoying, formless feeling in his chest, swirling and swirling and swirling away, and the only way Atsumu knows how to drag it out of him is with one more name.</p><p>“Tobio-kun,” he says finally. </p><p>Shouyou tilts his head, face blank. “Kageyama-kun?” </p><p>“Yeah,” Atsumu says. And there it goes—snip, snip. Every last string of rational thought. “Kageyama.” </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>When he was 17, Miya Atsumu met Hinata Shouyou. But before that, he had met Kageyama Tobio—Mr. Goody Two-Shoes Tobio, Nice Boy Tobio, Future Meiji Milk Sponsor Tobio with the monstrous serves and even more monstrous haircuts. When Atsumu was 17, he had Osamu, and when Tobio was 16, he had Hinata, and Hinata had him. Atsumu thought he had seen Tobio—<em>the </em>Tobio, <em>the</em> perpetually-stick-up-my-ass Tobio with that scary sniper’s aim—until he watched Tobio set a ball towards Hinata’s waiting hand and saw both their faces break out into something feral, something wondrous and unfathomable. Atsumu was moved. Atsumu was <em>pissed</em>. But most of all, Atsumu was scared shitless, because sometime between Tobio setting that ball and Hinata slamming it down into Inarizaki’s court, Atsumu had realized that there were people out there that could do that—transform the whole shape of you, until you were one part unrecognizable and another part miraculous, holy, more untouchable than air. What Kageyama and Hinata had was something more than blood, more than muscle and bone and tissue. Kageyama had known a Hinata without wings, and Hinata had known a Kageyama without a crown, and amidst the maelstrom and chaos they brought to the court, that meant something to both of them.</p><p>Atsumu had never met Shouyou before that match, and some part of him is glad that he didn’t. He doesn’t want to know what Hinata Shouyou looked like before Kageyama Tobio. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Shouyou says, “There was never anything between Kageyama-kun and me.”</p><p>And then he says, “At least, not in the way you’re thinking. I think.”</p><p>Atsumu says, wisely, “I really don’t know what I’m thinkin’.”</p><p>“I think,” Shouyou says, “that you think that Kageyama-kun and I had something like you and I know did, because we were teammates and he set for me and he’s friends with me. I guess.” </p><p>“You guess,” Atsumu repeats, wisely. </p><p>Shouyou barrels on ahead and leaves Atsumu’s stuttering wisdom in the dust. “That’s not true though. I’ve never had <em>anything</em> with anyone the way I have this thing with you, Atsumu-san.”</p><p>Atsumu admittedly gets lost midway through the sentence, but then he hears his name and releases a breath, carefully placed somewhere between his chest and throat. “I,” he stammers out. “Yeah. Me too, Shouyou-kun.”</p><p>“I’m glad.” Shouyou is beaming. Fuck. </p><p>“It’s just that you and Kageyama always seemed like—” Atsumu is terrible at the human language. The worst. “I dunno. You always seemed like Naruto and Sasuke to me?” </p><p>“Huh?” <em>The worst</em>.</p><p>“Like fated rivals and all that,” Atsumu rushes to fill in, and curses that hot-as-balls summer before third year when he’d begged Aran to lend him volumes from his manga collection out of sheer, mind-numbing boredom. “The light to the dark. Always catching up to each other. Inevitable, maybe.”</p><p>“Wow, Atsumu-san,” Shouyou says. He sounds genuinely impressed. “I didn’t realize you were so poetic. About Naruto.” </p><p>“I didn’t say anything,” Atsumu lies, because he’s Atsumu. </p><p>“Of course,” Shouyou agrees, because he’s Shouyou, and he has the entire collection of One Piece stuffed under his bed so he can’t say shit. “But y’know … I never really thought of me and Kageyama-kun that way. Thinking back on it, it was mainly ‘cause of luck that we ended up both playing for Karasuno. And then we became teammates. Bam.”</p><p>“Bam,” Atsumu says. Shouyou nods.</p><p>And see here: Atsumu knows all of this. Shouyou <em>only </em>ever says what he means, so it must be true that Kageyama Tobio is just Kageyama Tobio and not the eternal, brooding, knock-off Sasuke to Hinata’s brilliantly blinding and obnoxiously orange Naruto. He knows it like he knows Shouyou likes to take his tea with salted rice crackers, like he knows Shouyou freckles in the sun, like he knows he is prone to catastrophizing because Atsumu will probably die if Shouyou doesn’t love him with the same buck-shit crazy fervor that Atsumu loves Shouyou with. </p><p>And see here: volleyball <em>was</em> Atsumu’s whole world. Osamu was, too, but then Osamu had always been a part of it. There was never a choice. But Shouyou is Atsumu choosing to open up his world a little bit more. Shouyou is choosing Atsumu, and Atsumu is choosing to throw all caution to the wind like so many others (see: two) before him and say, <em>Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll fuck the sun. Who wouldn’t, right? </em>Shouyou is Atsumu daring to be more than enough, and he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to be terrified of that or deliriously happy or both. Probably both. Shouyou is still beaming at him and Atsumu has thrown out all of his post-apocalyptic protocols out the window so it must be both.</p><p>Atsumu laces his fingers through Shouyou’s, pinkie, ring, index. He rubs the callus right above Shouyou’s first knuckle. “You comin’ back here wasn’t luck though.”</p><p>Coming back to me, Atsumu doesn’t say, because he’s not Hinata and he’s still not the kind of guy who will ever just say what he means and Shouyou was never really his, to begin with. But Shouyou squeezes his hand back, so Atsumu guesses they’ll be okay after all. They’ll have dinner and cuddle and neck on the couch and watch a documentary on red pandas and eat boba milk bars because that’s just what you do when you get to choose someone like Shouyou to devote yourself to.</p><p>“It was more than luck that made me stay,” Shouyou says. He smiles up at Atsumu, and this time, Atsumu has the good sense to smile back and just let himself be swallowed up by the light.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>a side note: originally this fic was supposed to be titled "forget your ex, have sex with me" and have 75% more horny energy but then atsumu had more feelings than i planned for. fuck you and your feelings atsumu</p><p>kudos and comments are always appreciated, but thank you for taking the time to read in the first place &lt;3 </p><p>(i am on <a href="https://twitter.com/span1shsahara">twitter</a> sometimes! feel free to chat with me there. i would unfortunately love to talk your head off about miya atsumu's fucking feelings and other things)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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